Southern Baptists and Voting Irregularities

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The fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention began at a meeting in Houston, Texas in 1979. From the beginning voting irregularities accompanied the takeover. (John Baugh, the Baptist layman who founded Sysco Corp., calls it "Voting Fraud" -- see his Battle for Baptist Integrity, p. 95)

The chief architect of the SBC takeover was Houston appellate court judge Paul Pressler who meticulously reviewed the Convention's Constitution and By-laws and crafted the strategy for the takeover. Yet, in 1979, Pressler himself registered and voted at the Convention's annual meeting in violation of the SBC's Constitution. Pressler registered as a messenger (delegate) from a church in which he was not a member (the ecclesial equivalent to the recent vote fraud felony Ann Coulter allegedly committed when she voted at a precinct in which she did not live).

Grady Cothen, retired head of the SBC's huge publishing house, in his book What Happened to the Southern Baptist Convention? (pp. 15-16) summarized a press report from the meeting:

The same press report said that the registration secretary of the convention promised an intensive investigation into alleged irregularities in voting procedures during the election of the president. Since the Rogers' majority was only 163 votes, some thought the outcome was in question. Some churches had more than the legal limit -- ten -- messengers. Some messengers registered twice, and some pastors registered for all ten of their messengers -- a practice since disallowed. One pastor registered for himself, his wife, and four children. Under questioning by another pastor, he admitted that the children were out at the KOA campground and not at the convention. Another pastor told of watching a man mark eleven ballots in the presidential election and turn in all of them.

more at link
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/2/17/164644/502